Research

I work in two areas of philosophy's history: Early Modern Philosophy and Early Analytic Philosophy. My interests primarily concern the mind, our conceptual abilities, and mental representation. I am also interested in methodological and metaphilosophical issues concerning the ‘canon’ of philosophy’s history – and issues concerning why and how various thinkers (especially women) have been excluded from the canon.

For my PhilPeople page, visit: https://philpeople.org/profiles/peter-west

Edited Volume: 

• Berkeley's Doctrine of Signs (edited with Manuel Fasko). Available open access with De Gruyter here. 

Journal Publications

• 'Philosophy is not a science: Margaret Macdonald on the nature of philosophical theories' HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.

• 'The Depth of Margaret Cavendish's Ecology' (with Manuel Fasko) Ergo, forthcoming.

• 'Mary Shepherd on Space and Minds' (with Manuel Fasko) Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy forthcoming.

• ‘The Philosopher Versus the Physicist: Eddington’s Rejoinder to Stebbing’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.

• 'Seeing Life Steadily: Dorothy Emmet's philosophy of perception and the crisis in metaphysics' British Journal for the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.

• ‘Teaching Margaret Cavendish: Early Modern Women and the Question of Biography’ ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, 14: 1, Article 7.

• ‘British Empiricism’ (with Manuel Fasko), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

• ‘Getting Beyond the “Curtain of the Fancy”: Anti-Representationalism in Berkeley and Sergeant’ Berkeley Studies, 30 (2023), 3-21.

• ‘Stebbing and Eddington in the Shadow of Bergson’ (with Matyáš Moravec) History of Philosophy Quarterly, 40:1 (2023), 59-84.

• ‘Mind-Body Commerce: Occasional Causation and Mental Representation in Anton Wilhelm Amo’ Philosophy Compass. 17:9 (2022).

• ‘Margaret Cavendish on Conceivability, Possibility, and the Case of Colours’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 30:3 (2022), 456-476.

• ‘The Philosopher Versus the Physicist: Susan Stebbing on Eddington and the Passage of Time’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 30:1 (2022), 130-151.

• ‘L. Susan Stebbing, Philosophy and the Physicists (1937): a re-appraisal’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30:5 (2022), 859-873.

• ‘Why Can An Idea Be Like Nothing But Another Idea? A Conceptual Interpretation of Berkeley’s Likeness Principle’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7:4 (2021), 530-548.

• 'The Irish Context of Berkeley's Resemblance Thesis' (with Manuel Fasko) Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 88 (2020), 7-13.

• ‘Reid and Berkeley on Scepticism, Representationalism, and Ideas’ Journal of Scottish Philosophy 17:3 (2019), 191-210.

• ‘Berkeley on Abstract Ideas and Language in Alciphron VII’ Ruch Filozoficzny 74:4 (2019).

Book Chapters

• ‘Shepherd’s “modified Berkeleian theory”’ in The Philosophy of Lady Mary Shepherd. Keota Fields (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).

• ‘Stebbing and Idealism’ Susan Stebbing on Logic and Analysis. Siobhan Chapman and Brian Garvey (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming).

• ‘Stebbing’s Pelicans: Public Philosophy in Philosophy and the Physicists and Thinking to Some Purpose’ Oxford New Histories of Philosophy volume on Stebbing, (forthcoming).

• ‘Is There Anybody Out There? Berkeley’s Indirect Realism About Other Minds’ Berkeley’s Doctrine of Signs. Manuel Fasko and Peter West (eds). De Gruyter (2024).

• ‘The Unorthodox Margaret Cavendish’ (with Tom Stoneham) in The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, Detlefsen and Shapiro (eds.) Routledge. (2023).

• ‘Introduction’ to a new edition of Susan Stebbing’s Thinking to Some Purpose with Routledge (2022), xv-xxviii.

• 'Molyneux's Question: The Irish Debates' (with Manuel Fasko) in Molyneux's Question and the History of Philosophy. Gabriele Ferretti and Brian Glenney (eds.) London: Routledge (2020), 122-135.

• ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You: Berkeley on Self-Knowledge and Other Minds’ in The Self and Self-Knowledge in Early Modern Philosophy Gábor Boros, Judit Szalai, Oliver Istvan Toth (eds.) Budapest: Eötvös University Press (2020).

Book Reviews

• ‘Francesca Peacock. Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.’ Hypatia, forthcoming.

• ‘Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith (editors and translators), Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, pp.237, ISBN: 9780197501627 (hbk) £61, (pb) £22.99.’ Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, first view: https://doi.org/10.1515/jtph-2023-0021.

• ‘Comparisons in the History of Philosophy: A review of The Metaphysics of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway: Vitalism, Monism, and Self-Motion by Marcy P. Lascano,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy, (forthcoming).

• 'Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith (editors and translators), Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, pp.237, ISBN: 9780197501627 (hbk) £61, (pb) £22.99.’ Journal of Transcendental Philosophy, first view: https://doi.org/10.1515/jtph-2023-0021.

• ‘What We Owe the Future’ by William MacAskill, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).

• ‘The Women Are Up To Something: How Elisabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgeley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics’ by Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).

• ‘Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back To Life’ by Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).

• ‘The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning’ by Justin E. H. Smith. Philosophical Quarterly. First view: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqac058

• ‘George Berkeley and Early Modern Philosophy’ by Stephen H. Daniel, Journal for the History of Philosophy. 60:3 (2022), 510-511.